A jazz musician doesn’t walk on stage knowing exactly what he will play.
And yet what comes out is not chaos. It is something alive, precise and unrepeatable. That is improvisation.
And that is exactly what modern business is demanding from all of us right now.
Improvisation is not the same as winging it.
Here is a more precise definition I’ve developed: the ability to act decisively without complete information, without a guaranteed outcome and without losing your footing in the process.
That last part is where most people struggle quietly and alone.
Why The Old Model Fails
Most of us were taught a clear sequence:
Gather information
Analyze
Prepare
Act
In a stable world, that was reasonable. In today’s business environment, it is a liability.
Accenture’s Pulse of Change research found that the pace of business disruption continues to accelerate, with 90% of C-suite leaders saying it had accelerated since the start of 2025 and 84% expecting it to increase further in 2026. More tellingly, only 42% felt fully prepared to respond to the change they would face.
The old playbook was designed for a world that no longer exists.
The numbers make this hard to ignore. A 2023 Oracle study of over 14,000 business leaders across 17 countries found that 85% had suffered from decision distress, and 72% admitted that the sheer volume of data had stopped them from making any decision at all.
The cost of that hesitation is not abstract. Research estimates that decision fatigue costs the global economy approximately $400 billion annually in lost productivity and poor decision outcomes.
More data has not made decisions easier. It has made them harder.
When the picture feels incomplete, people postpone. The internal burden builds. Self-doubt follows. And the window closes.
Improvisation Is A Skill, Not A Talent
This is my central point: Improvisation is not something you are born with. It is a capacity built through practice, the same way strength is built in a gym.
It begins with one permission: the permission not to know yet, and to move anyway.
There is a meaningful difference between two inner positions.
1
"I know exactly how this should be done."
2
"I will understand it as I go, and that is enough."
The first collapses when circumstances change. The second holds.
Two Images Worth Keeping
According to a 2023 "State of Agile Culture Report", 71% of employees do not believe their leaders are capable of responding to market changes — not because those leaders lack intelligence, but because they have been trained to plan rather than to respond.
Only 10% of leaders demonstrate what researchers call "post-heroic" leadership qualities: the ability to adapt in real time rather than execute a fixed script.
Only 10% of leaders demonstrate what researchers call "post-heroic" leadership qualities: the ability to adapt in real time rather than execute a fixed script.
And jazz. A musician listens to himself and, even more importantly, to the other players. From that real-time attunement, something emerges that no one planned in advance
Research on collaborative decision making shows that teams make better decisions than individuals about 66% of the time, and that this rises to 87% for more inclusive teams. In business terms: know who is in your band.
Four Practices
1
To make decisions when you have reached sufficiency, not completeness
In his 2016 letter to Amazon shareholders, Jeff Bezos wrote that most decisions should be made with around 70% of the information you wish you had, and that waiting for 90% means you are probably already too late.
I work with the same principle, but with one important addition that Bezos left implicit: you need a method for knowing when you have reached sufficiency.
Over years of conversations with leaders across industries, one pattern holds consistently. The decisions that shaped careers and companies were rarely made with full information. And the projects that failed became the foundation for the ones that succeeded.
Failure is not the opposite of progress. It is material for it.
2
Allowing yourself imperfection
A meta-analysis drawing on data from over 10,000 participants across 43 studies confirmed that perfectionistic concerns — characterized by excessive preoccupation with others' opinions and negative self-evaluation—show a consistent positive correlation with procrastination.
The distinction the research draws is precise and important: wanting to do excellent work drives you forward. What holds people back is not excellence, but perfectionism and the fear of falling short. Imperfect action is not failure. It is part of the process.
3
Building tolerance for the discomfort of not-yet-knowing
This is different from accepting uncertainty intellectually, as most leaders do that easily. It is the experience of moving while unclear, and not interpreting that discomfort as danger. Leaders who develop this tolerance do not become reckless. They become faster to calibrate.
4
Three questions for moments of pressure:
What is happening right now?
What matters most to me here?
What is my next step?
These cut through noise and return you to yourself. From that place, real improvisation becomes possible.
Back To The Jazz
The musician walks on stage with deep knowledge, real technique and no fixed script. What he plays depends on the room, the moment, the other musicians.
It is alive in a way no rehearsed performance can match. And he walks offstage changed. The performance did not just produce music, it produced a more capable musician.
Business at its best works the same way.
- Not chaos. The disciplined ability to act with inner clarity
when the external picture is still forming. - To ride the wave that arrives,
not the one you prepared for. - To listen to your band and build something none
of you could have produced alone.
And when it is over, when the decision is made, the crisis is navigated — you are not back to zero. You are further along.
That is the compounding return of improvisation as a practice. You do not just get through the moment. You become someone who is better at the next one.
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Elina looks forward to the opportunity to contribute to the success of your professional forum and engage with your audience in a meaningful way.
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